Contents

Workgroup Summary

The objective of this workgroup was to facilitate the collection, aggregation, management and distribution of descriptive and illustrative content to create a compelling user experience. Content was defined to include anything except rates, availability, and inventory types of information. It included information that is descriptive or illustrative (text or visuals) and may come in a variety of formats, e.g. images, videos, text, or XML descriptions.

The premise of the workgroup was that hotels should have a single point of entry from which they can manage rich content in all connected distribution and promotional channels; distribution and promotional channels should have a single point of access, from which they can receive rich content from all connected hotels and hotel companies; and intermediary content service companies, who perform services such as image enhancement, mapping, and translation, should have a single point of access, under the authority and control of the hotels, so that they can receive content updates, perform their enhancement services, and forward the results onward to the next stage in the editing, approval, or distribution process.

The workgroup scope covered all systems that deal with content that describes hotel products, and that is essentially static in nature. To the extent that the workgroup dealt with information that may be considered transactional (such as rate plan descriptions), the scope included such information upon agreement of the Product Distribution Workgroup.

Key Milestones

Submitted enhancements to the OpenTravel 2006B and 2007A specifications to assist in the content management process

Produced a certifiable specification that allows hotels to deliver rich descriptive content to distribution channels and websites - completed September 2009

Status

The Distribution Content Management Workgroup is currently retired and thus, not actively meeting. The workgroup is accepting community feedback on its initial certifiable specficiation, and may reinvigorate at some point in the future to produce a V2 spec.